The Election: What Does It All Mean?

Remember, for the American Eagle to fly straight and strong it needs a strong Left Wing and a strong Right Wing. Image: wikipedia commons

The people have spoken. After an extraordinarily close election (in several cases there were states with less than 10,000 votes separating the two competitors) we land right back where we started: A Democrat in the White House, a Republican House and a Democrat Senate. And neither party can legitimately claim any sort of mandate from the people.

So where does this leave us? Well, there are several very important issues on the table that our President and Congress will need to address:

– Sequestration (That crazy agreement by our two parties to cut over a trillion dollars from Social and Defense programs on January 1, 2013 if they don’t agree on another cost-cutting measure).

– The expiring “Bush-era” Tax Cuts that will drive all of our taxes up to pre-Clinton years (the hold-up is whether the Republicans will agree to raising taxes on the wealthy – and Small-Business owners – yes, that’s right, if you own a small surf shop and file taxes as an individual instead of a corporation, as most small businesses do, you very well could have a tax hike coming your way).

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– Extending the Debt Limit – again the country continues to spend money it does not have and we will likely reach our debt ceiling mandated by law sometime this winter.

– Unemployment – there are still 23 Million + folks unemployed and there seems to be no solution on the horizon (this means that the crowd in the line-up will continue to grow with folks having more time on their hands)

– China and Russia continue growing their military capability with new weapons purchases and increased technology – I don’t care what anyone says but the Commie’s are still a big problem

– Iran has been a problem since 1979 (go see the movie “Argo”) and we have in effect been at war with them since that time (Beriut, Khobar Towers, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Muqtada al Sadr in Iraq are all examples of Iran meddling with the US and our allies) and now they are close to getting nuclear weapons.

All of these issues, plus many more involving the economy and energy policy, will need to be addressed by much of the same crowd who have been in charge but can’t seem to get along enough to get anything done.

So what’s a surfer to do? Stay active in the political scene and push for effective compromise between our leaders. Democratic participation is essential to moving our nation where we as citizens want to go. The Left and Right wing politicians are usually closer to agreement than they want to let on and there is plenty of business that they can agree on enough to push our government forward.

Remember, for the American Eagle to fly straight and strong it needs a strong Left Wing and a strong Right Wing.